Questions on pay probed at hotel / City says 2 workers may not be getting required minimum

George Raine, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Friday, October 22, 2004

Photo: BOB MCLEOD

Image 1of/1

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 1

HOTELg-C-26MAR02-RE-BM
the new Omni Hotel from street level. a look past the entrance overhang up. CHRONICLE PHOTO BY BOB MCLEOD Ran on: 10-22-2004
The Omni San Francisco Hotel, which has locked out its workers, is using replacement help from its sister hotels in other states. less

HOTELg-C-26MAR02-RE-BM
the new Omni Hotel from street level. a look past the entrance overhang up. CHRONICLE PHOTO BY BOB MCLEOD Ran on: 10-22-2004
The Omni San Francisco Hotel, which has locked out its ... more

Photo: BOB MCLEOD

Questions on pay probed at hotel / City says 2 workers may not be getting required minimum

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

A San Francisco official who monitors minimum wage compliance said Thursday that the Omni San Francisco Hotel, which has locked out its union employees in a labor dispute, may not be paying the city's required minimum wage of $8.50 an hour to at least two replacement workers.

Omni Hotels said that those workers will be made whole and that the problem developed because some 35 replacement workers -- on loan from Omni facilities in other cities including Houston, New Orleans and Atlanta -- are still being paid by their home hotels and the Omni San Francisco is not controlling payroll.

The city's investigation, by Donna Levitt, San Francisco's wage enforcement officer, followed a tip that some workers at the Omni were receiving less than $8.50 per hour.

Indeed, she said one had a base rate of less than $3 an hour and a handful are being paid less than $5 an hour. However, compensation for all but two replacement workers rises to more than $8.50 an hour after proceeds from service fees that guests pay are divided among the staff.

Levitt said that she met with human resource personnel at the Omni Thursday and that pay records for the two workers need to be reviewed to confirm they're being underpaid. "I think they want to take care of this as quickly as possible," she said of the Omni.

Levitt said she made inquiries about 35 workers who are bellmen, banquet servers and room servers. However, a spokeswoman for the hotel, Barbara French, put the number of Omni workers from other hotels at 18.

Now Playing:

French added that the service fees charged guests cover banquets, handling luggage and other services. She said that a banquet server, for example, who may earn a flat rate of $8.50 per hour, may take home $26 an hour after receiving a share of the mandatory service fee.

She added that employees who have been hired by Omni since the lockout began are receiving the full rate for union workers -- $15 per hour for room cleaning, for example.

Latest from the SFGATE homepage:

Click below for the top news from around the Bay Area and beyond. Sign up for our newsletters to be the first to learn about breaking news and more. Go to 'Sign In' and 'Manage Profile' at the top of the page.